Baltimore Sun Op-Ed Could Hurt Dems by Energizing Gun Owners

Perhaps no other Democrat politician better epitomizes that party’s gun control adherence than Sen. Charles Schumer of New York. (YouTube, MSNBC)

One day after a man with an apparent grudge allegedly opened fire at an Annapolis, Maryland newspaper office killing five people, the Capital Gazette’s parent newspaper, the Baltimore Sun, published an Op-ed that could damage Democrats because it focuses on that party’s adherence to the gun control agenda.

Gregg Lee Carter, a professor of sociology at Bryant University in Rhode Island, told readers:

“Marching (e.g., March for Our Lives; the Million Mom March) is good. Calling and emailing your congressional representatives is good. Letting Dick’s, Walmart and other businesses championing some form of gun control hear from you is good too. Supporting political savvy and increasingly effective national organizations promoting stronger gun laws is money well spent (especially when directed to Everytown for Gun Safety, the Brady Campaign and the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence).

“But the most important and serious action you can take, if you really want serious federal gun control successfully legislated, is to vote Democratic in 2018 and 2020.”

This wasn’t Carter’s first foray into the gun debate, especially touting the idea that voting for Democrats is the only way to achieve the kind of gun control that Second Amendment activists find restrictive if not downright repugnant.

“Serious gun control,” Carter writes, “includes dozens of measures, but at minimum it embraces those that the majority of the voting public currently supports: universal background checks (or even better, requiring a purchase permit in which a potential gun-buyer has been vetted by local law enforcement); regulating Internet sales of firearms such that transactions between anonymous buyers and sellers are thwarted; creating a federal gun-sale registration database; strong requirements for the safe storage of guns kept at home or at work; and resurrecting the federal assault weapons ban, which included restrictions on the size of ammunition magazines.”

Back in early April, writing in the Providence Journal, Carter observed, “However, national gun laws will not change unless Democrats control both houses of Congress, plus the presidency. There is no chance of this occurring until the 2020 national election. Republicans will not strengthen gun laws, despite the majority of Americans wanting stronger laws and despite research showing that strong gun laws can reduce the total amount of gun violence.”

Carter is described as “a gun owner and grew up as a hunter and target-shooter in the strong gun culture of the mountain states of Montana and Nevada.”

Last Thursday’s newspaper office attack has been problematic for anti-gunners. Maryland has some of the toughest gun laws in the nation, yet the suspect was able to legally purchase the alleged murder weapon – a pump-action shotgun – at retail. And the gun poses a problem because it cannot be easily demonized. It’s the same type of shotgun used by millions of hunters and recreational shooters for several generations. It’s the epitome of a traditional sporting arm, and millions of them are owned, even by Democrats.

But Carter’s writings have once again reinforced the widespread notion that Democrats are “the party of gun control.” Several gun-toting Democrats would dispute that, but the brand sticks because the national party leadership reinforces the label by word and deed.

They probably didn’t need any help from a Rhode Island academic to remind voters.

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About Dave Workman

Dave Workman is an award-winning career journalist with an expertise in firearms and the outdoors. He is the author of several books dealing with firearms politics. He has a degree in editorial journalism from the University of Washington and is a lifelong Washington resident.